Polymer meshes are frequently implanted for surgical
treatment of hernia. As, these meshes cannot be depicted with conventional
radiological methods, aim of this study was to develop an MR-visible mesh
implant. After incorporating superparamagnetic nanoparticles of ferrofluids
into the mesh-filaments, susceptibility artefacts enabled delineation of the
mesh. As intra-abdominal air and scar tissue present with hypointense signal
intensities too, positive contrast of these susceptibilities was achieved by
using inversion-recovery with ON-resonant water suppression (IRON) sequences.
In phantoms and animal corps, the ferrous mesh was clearly delineated
using IRON-imaging. Consequently, this method can help to reveal frequent
post-surgery mesh related problems.